


What's Dead Doesn't Always Stay

by echo_of_words (orphan_account)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Animal Death, Blood, Co-Written, M/M, Needles, Non-Graphic Violence, Phanfiction Telephone Events, Zombie Apocalypse, gun mention, i really don't know how to title this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 09:57:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20387857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/echo_of_words
Summary: Dan and Phil never actually expected the zombie apocalypse to happen. But then one day, it does, and and when it all goes horribly wrong, Dan has to cling to one small hope to turn it all around again.





	What's Dead Doesn't Always Stay

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This fic is part of the Phanfiction Telephone Events, meaning it was co-written by two other authors. The first person got a prompt and wrote the beginning of the fic, the second person added onto their part, and I wrote the ending. I don't know who the other two authors are yet, but I'll add them as co-creators as soon as the teams are revealed.  
I'm not entirely happy with my part tbh, but it's as good as it's gonna get, so here ya go.  
The authors who wrote this fic were @death-by-toast-bitch, @anotheregofanficblog and @echo-of-words on Tumblr. (I'm echo-of-words, I just didn't want this fic attached to my ao3 account anymore, hence why I orphaned it.)
> 
> EDIT: Apparently two people got assigned the same fic for part 3? Not sure how that happened, but anyway, go check out TaylorLives' version, too!

_Everything’s moving so fast. I barely have the time to think as I kneel over his limp body, checking his pulse for the hundredth time over. The world around me spins in circles and the ground seems to liquify, all while my eyes burned with tears I won’t set free. Crying means it’s real. Crying means I’ve given up. Crying means that I’ll never see his beautiful blue eyes again, never laugh at bad movies with him again, never again yell at him for eating my cereal, no more good morning kisses and goodnight hugs..._

I start awake in a cold sweat, the space in the bed next to me nearly as empty as my heart feels. I twist myself to look out the back window, squinting to make out any of the undead bastards that might be loitering outside. I check to make sure nothing’s been stolen in the dead of night, though I doubt it; I haven’t managed to get a gun yet, since those tend to be harder to find in the UK. I’ve chosen to stick more to the oh-so-generic yet functional nail-covered bat. I’ve nearly given myself tetanus on multiple occasions, and if it can accidentally almost kill me, it should be perfectly fine at purposefully killing zombies. I grab the bat and, grudgingly, walk outside. Looking around, the coast seems to be clear of anyone, infected or otherwise.

Perfect.

I stalk into the forest as quietly as I can, checking each of the traps I set for any unfortunate small mammals that wandered past. Over the course of roughly half an hour, I manage to collect three squirrels, an abundance of mice, and a rabbit. I’m very happy with the overall catch; rabbits aren’t all too common around these parts.

I slowly make my way back to my makeshift shelter, making sure to check for zombies and other people as I traverse the overgrown bush. Honestly, I’m less scared of the zombies. They scared me at first, but now I’m an expert at dealing with them. People? Not so much. Honestly, they still scare me; I was perfectly fine with it just being me and Phil for a while, that is, until...Well, let’s just say I can’t exactly talk to him much anymore.

After about a half hour walk (I don’t like to be near the woods, where anything or anyone can jump out at me without warning. I prefer a place where I can see everything for miles), I finally make it back to my shelter. I’ve long since barricaded the place. I butcher each of the animals; I have practice, so it doesn't take long. I make sure to keep the heads intact. I put each animal head in a small pouch and spend about ten minutes unlocking the door to the back room. I step in and saw a sight that, even after all this time, makes me ill. There, in a heavily barred cage, is Phil, in all of his zombified...I would say glory, but in all honesty, I can't even say that sarcastically. When he got infected, I didn't have the heart to kill him, not after all this time. The others in our little group left me with him, saying that if I kept him, he would only eat me and leave me for dead. I knew they were right, but still...I couldn't do it. Not when his bright blue eyes still looked into my soul, as deadened and inhuman as they were. They’re still beautiful eyes; they’re still _Phil’s_ eyes.

I turn my head away and slowly shake the contents of the bag out onto the floor, cautiously kicking them through the metal bars. He rushes forward to the source of food, barbarically smashing open each skull and eating the mulch inside. Unable to watch any longer, I leave the room, taking care to board the door back up for the case that he does manage to escape his iron cell. I spend the rest of the evening in silence, as I usually do; I don’t believe I've actually spoken at all since he turned. I'm not even sure if I still can, if I remember how. I suppose it’s just how things are now.

You get used to things. How they are is how they’ve always been, it’s some 1984 bull right there.

There is a man in Europe, who’s found a cure (apparently). But even if he had, I think, it’ll be politicians, police, army men. It won’t be Phil. I could try to get there, I could run right up to his front door (if I could find where he lived) and then I could get shot. No, if there is a solution, I’ll have to get it through different means. But I can’t. This is how I think every night, trying to get to sleep. Well, not even trying at this point.

My stupidly large vocabulary and average education have never helped in this whole fiasco. Fortunately, I am also a goddamn coward, which is fun because I never feel the need to communicate with anyone and so far I haven’t been killed. But everything changes when the morning rises.

* * *

Someone knocks at the door. Grabbing the bat from next to my bed, I run to the door. Waiting. If they are so desperate, they’ll probably break the door down and, if they are a zombie, I’ll be ready. Or maybe if they aren’t a zombie, too.

Well, the door breaks. RIP door. An elderly woman is standing there, covered in blood. She doesn’t look like a zombie, but sometimes it’s just like that.

“Speak.” I demand. So it looks like I can still talk. And my voice still sounds dumb as ever, it’s almost laughable.

“Hello?” She asks, sounding frail and slightly agitated. “Is that good enough for you?” Ah, it seems she is also sarcastic. Sarcastic granny covered in blood. That’d be a video.

“Yeah, I suppose,” I mumble. “What do you want? Because you’re not staying here if that’s what you’re-”

“I’m not. I need food, also I’m feeling generous.

“Generous?” I ask.

“Yeah, yeah, you see I have this project which I thought the locals round here would back me up on when I get to Europe.”

_Europe-- is she serious?_

She goes to raid the cupboards and comes back with a can of soup.

“What’s your name?” she asks me.

“Doesn’t matter, what’s your project?” I respond immediately.

She frowns.

“Okay, fine. I’ve been working on a chemical that could-”

“Oh my god, you have a cure?” I near-shout without even thinking.

“No… I have a chemical which could kill all the undead when released into the atmosphere. There is no cure.”

There is no cure.

There is _no_ cure.

Oh my god.

There’s no--

There is no cure.

Phil.

“Why wouldn’t you work on a cure, though?”

She smiles at me and then shakes her head. “I did. The decay of the flesh is impossible to reverse. All the test subjects died immediately after.”

“But what if the decay had been limited?” I think of Phil. He hasn’t been able to move that much, in fact he still looks pretty human.

“Well I couldn’t find any, but I suppose...”

I draw a deep breath.

“I have a test subject.”

* * *

The place is colder than I expected. Neither of us talks as we wheel the cage across the tiled floor, our footsteps echoing along the corridor.

We walk past several glass tanks filled with some translucent green liquid. Some of them are empty, others hold things like severed body parts or even, in one case, an entire body, floating in an almost serene way, the liquid tinging their pale complexion a sickly green. As we walk past, I frown a little at the dark hole over the dead person’s heart.

“Was that one of the test subjects?” I ask as we continue onwards.

The old woman turns around to glance back at the tank. “Oh, that? Yes, well, that was one of the earlier ones. Testing didn’t go quite as well as we’d hoped, and, well...let’s just say the measures we had to take in the end were a little, ah, extreme. Don’t look at me like that,” she adds reproachfully upon seeing my expression. “That was only in the very beginning. Like, three weeks ago. We’ve gotten a lot further now, and we hardly ever have to do _that_ anymore.”

She halts abruptly, nearly causing me to slam the cage into her back. I only just manage to yank it backwards, causing the cage to skid a little. Phil snarls as the sudden change in momentum causes him to trip. He slams hard into the bars and falls onto the floor of the cage, groaning.

I make sure the cage is steady before rushing around the outside to where he’s now lying on the metal floor, moaning quietly.

“Phil? Phil?”

He raises his head and growls at me.

The old woman turns back and raises an eyebrow. “He can’t understand you. Don’t you know that by now?”

“Yes, but--”

“Don’t worry about him, he’ll be fine.” She takes out a keycard and holds it against the door I’ve only just noticed. It opens with a hiss. “Probably,” she adds. “Come on, no time to lose.”

Now more worried than ever, I return to my place at the back of the cage and help her wheel Phil into what looks like a large lab. I blink rapidly as my eyes adjust to the sudden brightness.

The old woman - she never did give me her name - leads the way over to what seems to be an oversized operating table with a hood and several robot arms surrounding it. I’m reminded absurdly of Dil giving birth to an alien son in The Sims 4, a million years ago.

“Right. Help me tranquilize him.” She walks over to a table and grabs an ominously large syringe, filled with clear liquid.

I stare at her in disbelief. “You never said anything about tranquilizing him!”

“Didn’t I? Well, now I did. We’re gonna need him to lie still, and there’s no good trying to move him when he’s clearly in the mood for murdering us.” She comes back over and pulls the cap off the needle. “Come on, hold him still.”

“Didn’t you just say he wants to murder us?”

“Well, yeah, but if we’re quick we’ll be fine. Come on, grab onto him.” She pulls a keyring out of her pocket and approaches the door of the cage.

“Uh, okay…” I really don’t want to do this, but I do see her point, so I take a deep breath and reach through the bars of the cage to put my arms around Phil’s torso from behind, reminiscent of so many lazy cuddles and late-night hugs. I’m filled with the mad urge to press a soft kiss to his neck.

He starts thrashing, snarling and trying to turn his head around to bite me. I jerk my head away and feel my heart crack a little. _He’s going to be alright_, I remind myself, even if there is a little voice in the back of my head, telling me that this might not work at all. _This isn’t Phil. You’re going to get him back._

The old woman throws the cage door open and climbs inside. In the blink of an eye, she’s stabbed the needle into his arm, injecting the tranquilizer into him. I flinch and look away. I’ve never liked needles much, and a huge one buried in Phil’s arm isn’t exactly my idea of a pleasant sight.

I feel him go limp in my arms as the tranquilizer takes effect. The old woman steps back and I look again, feeling slightly sick as I see the blood dripping off the needle.

“Wait, so they still have blood? That flows?”

She shrugs. “Yeah, apparently. I don’t really know the reason behind it. Not looking to find out. We’re here to cure your friend.”

“Boyfriend,” I say quietly, more to myself than to her. “He was - _is_ \- my boyfriend.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you want to call him, he’s a zombie now, and it’s my job to unzombify him. Come on, help me lift him onto the table. We need to get his chest and head into the hooded part, and take that filthy shirt off him. I need space to operate.”

I feel dread rising up inside me - there’s so much that could go wrong -, but I take a deep breath and nod.

“Yeah. Okay.”

* * *

From my estimated guess, it takes about an hour. The old woman’s typing things into the control panel of the robot arms, looking through a little glass window in the hood from time to time to monitor what they’re doing. There’s multiple screens displaying different diagrams of what I presume are Phil’s brain and heart. There’s also a heart monitor, although it’s been flatlining ever since she connected it. During all this, I’m sitting a few metres away on a white plastic chair, because apparently she “doesn’t want me interfering”, which, fair, but it still doesn’t stop me from worrying and craning my neck to try and see what she’s doing every few minutes.

Finally, the hum of the machines stops, and the old woman turns around. “Alright, that’s it. Now we just have to wait a few minutes until the tranquilizer wears off, and then we’ll see if his heart starts beating again.”

My medical knowledge is very limited, but I ask, confused: “Shouldn’t his heart be beating anyway, even if he’s unconscious?”

“Not with this tranquilizer. It’s specifically designed to completely disable all bodily functions, and that includes breathing and heartbeat.”

“Okay.” I notice my leg has started jiggling up and down again. I’ve done it so much over the past hour that it’s actually starting to hurt the muscles in my knee, but it feels grounding, so I continue doing it. “And we can’t tell whether it worked until his heart actually starts beating, right?”

“Correct.” She looks pointedly at my leg, raising an eyebrow. “Why do you do that?”

“Uh...don’t know. Anxiety, I think. Stimming helps.”

“If you say so.” She pulls up a chair and sits down as well.

We both sit in silence, watching the heart monitor. With every passing second, my fear and dread are mounting. _What if it doesn’t work? What if he dies? What if--_

A small spike appears on the heart monitor. My own heart skips a beat.

Another one, this time larger. I can feel my heart pounding.

Another one. And another. And another.

A groan issues from inside the hood. “Wh- whasgoingon? Where-- _Dan?_ Dan, where are you?”

I’m completely frozen in shock.

_Thunk._ He must’ve tried to sit up. “Dan?” he repeats, sounding scared. “What’s--”

My brain finally catches up with what’s happening and I leap to my feet. “Phil!” I yell back, all kinds of emotions whirling around inside me. I feel tears pricking at the corners of my eyes and turn to the old woman. “You-- you did it! You actually did it! You saved him!”

She looks at me, a smile on her face. “I did.” She looks like she doesn’t quite believe it herself yet. “I did!”

“Dan? Where are you?” Phil must’ve heard my voice. He sounds mildly panicked. “Dan?”

“I’m here, I’m here, just wait, we have to get you out of this thing--” I hurry over to the hood and pull on the stretcher we used to slide him inside. It slides out and shows me Phil, no longer covered in dried animal blood, looking scared.

“Phil? What’s wrong? I’m here, look, everything’s okay. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

Phil looks in my direction, although his eyes don’t focus on me. He looks absolutely terrified now.

“Phil?” Worry is edging itself back into my voice.

“Dan,” he says in a trembling voice. “Dan, I can’t see.”

“I-- But there’s lights everywhere! Don’t you-- oh...” I look over my shoulder at the old woman. “Is he…”

“His eyes were damaged beyond repair,” she says quietly. “I couldn’t save them. It’s a mystery to me how he was even able to see when he was a zombie.”

I look back at Phil. His lip is trembling, and I feel my eyes filling with tears as well.

“Oh, Phil…” I rush over and hug him, properly this time. He clutches onto me, sobbing into my shoulder. We rock back and forth, crying both happy and sad tears.

“It’s gonna be okay,” I whisper to him when we’ve both finally calmed down a little. “We...we’ll make this work. You’ll learn how to do this eventually. The important part is that you’re back, and you’re alive.” I hug him even more tightly.

“Yeah, I… Yeah. I’m just glad to have you back,” he mutters back.

“Do you remember anything from your time as a zombie?” the old woman butts in. “What was it like? Do you--”

I glare at her. “Shut up. Please.” Phil, who flinched away from the sound of her voice, buries his face in my shoulder again. “You can talk about this later.” For now, the only important thing is that I have Phil back.

I press a kiss to the top of his head. “I love you. So much. _So fucking much_, you don’t even know."

“Loveyoutoo,” he says quietly into my shirt, his voice still thick with tears. Somehow, he finds the strength to look up at me, and even though I know they can’t see, I’m overwhelmed with happiness at seeing those beautiful blue eyes again.

Because I was right, in the end.

They were - and always have been - _Phil’s_ eyes.


End file.
